PSYC 21621 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Central Tendency, Bar Chart

• School: Kent State University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 21621
• Professor: Jaruda

Document Summary

Review: bar graph, categories are separate, categorical variables, histogram, continuous variables, block histogram, no y-axis, the number of blocks show the frequency, polygon frequency. Characteristics of a distribution: shape, central tendency, variability. What is central tendency: common method for summarizing and describing a distribution find average score, an average can represent the entire distribution, central tendency, single score that is the most representative, center of a distribution. Problems with central tendency: how do we choose the value, no single, standard procedure to calculate, different methods produce different scores, suggesting slightly different meanings, some distributions are skewed in which will change our value of central tendency. How do we measure central tendency: three main ways, the mean: the average value, the median: the middle value, the mode: the most common value, single most representative number. The mean: abbreviations, population mean ( ) = x/n, sample mean (x or m) = x/n.